Researchers find unconscious racism in death-penalty juries

A new study by researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi, University of North Carolina and Rutgers University indicates that, on an unconscious level, Americans seem to value the worth of white lives over black lives. Researchers say this “unconscious racism” has particular consequences as juries make decisions in death-penalty cases.

“These study results are obviously troubling, but it could explain a lot about why racial disparities are still so prevalent in America,” said Professor Justin D. Levinson of the UH William S. Richardson School of Law and the lead author of the article. “If people indeed associate value with white citizens and lack of worth with black citizens, despite their best intentions, it opens up a whole new dialogue about inequality and what to do about it.”

In the study, the researchers measured the so-called “implicit (unconscious) biases” of the study sample, and compared the bias scores of “death-eligible” citizens (those who would be allowed to sit on a death-penalty jury) to non-death-eligible citizens (those who would be removed from such a jury due to their unwillingness to consider the death penalty as punishment).

In this context, the study found that jurors who are eligible to sit on juries in death-penalty cases actually harbored significantly more anti-black biases than those who would not be allowed to serve.

“How can a defendant get a fair trial when we exclude the jurors who are the least likely to hold implicit biases against the defendant?” asked Robert J. Smith, a co-author and an assistant professor of law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Smith noted that the results of the study indicate that a legally sanctioned process actually increases racial bias during the types of trials with the highest stakes: whether a person lives or dies.

I found a footnote in the Devaluing Death article and it says that the six states are “Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Oklahoma, and Texas. These six states (and two others, South Carolina and Pennsylvania) were the most active death penalty states between 2004 and 2009.”

Thank you and good job for the info on the six states and more.
By looking at the states listed, there are five states that are known to have many KKK communitys, and four states that are known to have many gangs in general.